In my previous Calling Servlets from a JSF Action inside JSR168 Portlet Environment post. I mentioned how to pass UTF-8 request parameters from your JSR 168 portlet to your servlet. A special note that I need to add is that if you are using WebSphere Portal Server 5.x or 6.x then you need to specify two parameters to be able to send UTF-8 (Arabic for example) parameters in your GET requests. Here are the steps to add these two parameters: 1. Login to your portal websphere administration console. Then select (Servers > Application Servers... [More]